Adelaide Festival. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 4 Mar 2025
A luminary of the Cabaret Festival, Camille O’Sullivan returns to Adelaide with an extended and more weighty show in Loveletters as a full attraction for the Festival of Arts. This is perhaps a mixed blessing; the show itself is vague in places; it is rambling and unfocused and yet poignant. It is as raw as Camille’s emotions are raw. It does, I suspect, need a sharpened direction which runs counter to the notions which swim through O’Sullivan’s narrative.
The stage is dressed with animals and clothes upon clothes stands – two cats and a dog. There is a rabbit lamp on a side table, make of that what you will. O’Sullivan peers from side of stage – and pivots from behind the side curtain, almost defying herself to be in the right place and immediately begins greeting the audience with a round of profuse thanks for making it possible for her to be back in Adelaide. It is endearing and the audience sweeps her and pianist Feargal Murray (‘my oldest dearest friend’) up into the evening.
This evening is a paeon to those who are no longer with us, and she makes clear that this not just about the music, it’s about the words. Beginning with Summer In Siam, it becomes clear this is a celebration of the lives of some of her friends, principally Shane McGowan and Sinead O’Connor. When her friends died, she didn’t play their songs; she read their words. A long story of their friendship precedes Broad Majestic Shannon, and so the genesis for the show is clear. Tom Waits Martha makes an appearance, as does the slightly oddly placed Amsterdam, the Jacques Brel classic. This, I suppose, is a nod to her previous performances here as part of the Cabaret Festival, a way of ushering in some of her audience who may not have been entirely comfortable with the 2025 performance from Camille.
Her voice has a rasp, her breath can be heard pulling back into the throat, she sounds raw and emotional in places (no surprise, of course) and in places, ragged. Nick Cave’s Jubilee Street is played with a thumping swagger, evocative of Patti Smith in the way the song launches into the break. This is followed by another nod to her cabaret days of yore, Kirsty MacColl’s In These Shoes. Back in the day I recall seeing her perform this in bright red sparkling four-inch heels; tonight it is less striking silver flats.
There is an interval and a costume change. Camille wears a red jumpsuit and – initially, at least – a tan jacket. She dips back into cabaret with the heart wrenching Look Mummy, No Hands. I had to look this one up – a 1997 song from Fascinating Aida.
By now the emotion is palpable – O’Sullivan takes a detour into the world of David Bowie and thence back to Sinead O’Connor - and she is by now quite flitting from one thought to another, moving forward from the microphone to talk to her audience mid-song, scolding herself, working through what might be described as blarney. It is brave and it is honest, but is it of a standard for a Festival performance? I’m not sure, but note in passing I saw Roky Erickson perform some years ago; mesmerizing yet similarly questionable.
“I don’t wanna cry no more, so cut me down from this here tree” she intones, from Take Me To The Church from O’Connor’s final album, ‘I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss’. Back to Nick Cave for The Ship Song and the night could not go by without acknowledging the beauty of Leonard Cohen’s words with Anthem, where there is a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in. One last homage to The Pogues with Rainy Night In Soho and Fairytale Of New York closes proceedings, and as a collection of Loveletters, it was perfectly enough.
Alex Wheaton
When: 4 Mar
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed
